A conservation group filed suit asking a judge to stop a federal agency from dredging a Georgia harbor during the nesting season for rare sea turtles that began over the weekend.
The group One Hundred Miles filed suit Friday in U.S. District Court against the Army Corps of Engineers, which plans to end a policy that for 30 years suspended coastal dredging from the Carolinas to Florida during the warmer months when sea turtles are most abundant in coastal waters and lay their eggs on Southern beaches.
Those seasonal windows have been credited with minimizing deaths and injuries to sea turtles by dredges that suck up sediments to clear waterways used by commercial ships. But the Army Corps plans to scrap them after federal scientists last year concluded that sea turtles protected by the Endangered Species Act can likely endure 150 deaths annually from year-round dredging.
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